Messages From Carrie
A Pot of Beans and The Paw Print of God
June 28th, 2005
I was flying in the United Airlines equivalent of a greyhound bus, Indianapolis to Denver, then Denver to Anchorage, when we hit the formable currents of a dark and foreboding thunderstorm. The pilot's voice abruptly (and bit to nervously) informed us of the largeness of the storm and to stay in our seats and buckle up. The plane pitched, dropped and bumped dramatically, reminding us all that if humans had been meant to fly, we'd all would have been born with wings sprouting from between our shoulder blades. I fingered my beaded bracelet as if it were a rosary, the bracelet I always wear as a personal prompt to stay aware, live the prayer, and that this life is not a dress rehearsal. So I prayed, silently and for everyone I know and love, one by one, bead by bead, finding it comforting to pull tenderly on the small threads that bind me to this world and those with whom I travel this life. I must admit after a particularly nasty drop, I wished my lapsed Catholic mother would have at least taught me the Hail Mary just in case of theological emergency, but she taught me other things instead and so I've come up with my own way of tipping my hat to mystery. To all of our relief we did past through that storm. And like so many times in my life, when I'd presumed to travel through spaces I had no business going, I got to the other side and landed safely, though shaken, on the solid ground.
Later that week Bruce, a quiet engineer, pilot and husband of Alaskan musician, approached me after a show. He asked with a smile if I like to fly to a place where two Glaciers meet. So we packed up my gear and we headed to the small Palmer airport. Palmer Alaska was founded during the Great Depression, when FDR gave an intrepid or desperate band of Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin farmers the chance to homestead in Alaska. They went with high hopes not unlike those of the gold rush miners a century before. They went with dreams of fertile land to call their own and of prodigious vegetables grown in the 24 hours of Alaskan summer sunlight. The little town had a decidedly safe Midwestern feel, build on a grid, and sporting a small silver water tower with the town's name proudly painted on it's side. This felt familiar and welcoming and I particularly enjoyed the all night diner/cafe that was attached to the small hotel where I stayed, where locals filled the tables and booths at midnight, the old ones talking about weather and methods of keeping small animals out of their gardens, teenagers talking in the bold, self conscience, looking for a little trouble to get into manner of high schoolers from small towns everywhere.
Bruce helped me into the back of his small super cub two-seater airplane. About the size of a Volkswagen, this style of airplane was originally built for crop dusting with large ballonish tires excellent for landing in the short fields and meadows. We headed down the short runway into the glow of the evening sun. The town fell away and almost immediately we were in the untamed woods and marshes, spotting moose and wild swan. We moved slowly moved through the sky, and I said silently to myself "This, this is the closest I'll ever get to having wings and feeling right that I should hang suspended on an updraft. The Super cub was blue, not silver and if the United Airlines jet I'd traveled to Denver was the equivalent to an airborne Greyhound bus, this was the equivalent to flying rocking chair. We quickly left behind the fingernail of human encampment headed into the huge and wild paw print of God. "The next town east of here is at 200 miles." Bruce said into his headset. "Anchorage is 60 miles south and up there is woods and glacier as far as you want to go." He told me he liked to take his son, and a pot of pork and beans and fly up here for a late supper. He told me they would set down and fish the cold glacier streams and camp just over that rise. I could only imagine what it might be like to sit with your father in the open paw of God, side by side in the shadow of eons old, shockingly blue glacial ice. What would it be like to eat pork and beans and lay down to sleep in all that wildness? . I am a person that takes great joy in daily miracles, and I often find wonder in the smallest of things, like the quiet that comes over the little pond near my house in the morning and evening, the smooth glassiness of water, the sound of a wood thrush and whippoorwill, the taste of an Indiana tomato in July, the softness of my dog's fur, the grin lines around my beloved's mouth, the rhythm of a long trip alone, and lovely unexpected kindnesses given by strangers. But this was beyond large, beyond big, this was the openness I have only felt in times of deep meditation, when something in me touches something eternal, something wild and mysterious, an uncluttered space so broad and open, and filled with glowing and unending light. Somehow it seemed too glorious. I had tears in my eyes and pulled the headset away so as not to sniff into Bruce's ear. It was then I got a sense of the father and son's smallness on that field below, their short lifespan back-dropped by all those eons old ice, the shortness of time before the father left this world for the next promise, followed so quickly by the son. In the shadow of forever worth of ice, a human being and a human life seemed so insignificant. One breath in all the breaths of eternity. But it was the pot of beans shared by two humans that brought the water again to rims of my eyes. I held close to me the image of a late supper of simple beans, shared by travelers in this wide world, amid the vast wild paw print of creation, a small thread of love, community and kindness, of precious few moments between this world and the next and yet forever in it's importance.
Carrie Newcomer - Alaska June 2005